


Medical Ethics

by kitszilla



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Gen, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 20:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10816392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitszilla/pseuds/kitszilla
Summary: Angela was no stranger to resuscitation. The surge of adrenaline when the code began, the narrowing of her thoughts and vision to nothing but what needed to be done next, settling into her role as a conductor of a life-saving orchestra of nurses and doctors and assistance. But even this familiar pattern, like all others, was disrupted, for the "Shimada project”, as Morrison called him.





	Medical Ethics

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to kind of explore Blackwatch!Genji, just trying to get a feel for him. And then Angela popped in because, you know, medical, and well...here we are. Moral conundrums, medical trauma, and a side order of angst.

Angela was no stranger to resuscitation. The surge of adrenaline when the code began, the narrowing of her thoughts and vision to nothing but what needed to be done next, settling into her role as a conductor of a life-saving orchestra of nurses and doctors and assistance. But even this familiar pattern, like all others, was disrupted, for the "Shimada project”, as Morrison called him. If she had been allowed to use her own professional judgment, she would have called his condition incompatible with life and ended the mission there, but she was under strict orders. She still wasn’t sure if she’d made the right choice in obeying them.

She hadn't questioned it when she'd been cracking his ribs beneath her hands as she pressed her hands into his chest, trying to keep his heart beating as the other medics worked to keep him from bleeding out right there. They'd loaded him up and he'd made it back to Switzerland, by some minor miracle, so they could stabilize him further and begin the modifications. It had been amazingly difficult, bringing him back on the aircraft they’d modified into a makeshift medical dropship. When they had stabilized him enough, blood dripped off her uniform and her gloved hands, soaking the trauma bay’s floor, her boots smearing it as she walked outside to lean for just a moment against the wall. Her eyes flickered closed, a bare whisper of sleep. Exhausted, but triumphant. He would have died, and every life was worth saving.

She hadn't questioned it on the twelfth straight night of one-to-one care, watching his still figure in the bed beside her, flinching every time one of his monitors flickered or beeped. Her hand hovered over the code button, ready to call the team again to bring him back from the edge. She spent her life in wrinkled surgical scrubs, waiting for the next rush to the operating room, the next flare of adrenaline as she yanked him back from the brink once more. They had given him a chance to live again, and she wouldn't waste it.

But doubts began to rise when his body started to reject his enhancements, throwing him into shock. Unable to cope with the invasion of the cybernetics into his body, his immune system fought back, and he boiled under her touch, blazing with fever. The immunosuppressants barely helped, and there was nothing they could do but wait out the vomiting, the chills, the delirium.

She'd started to question her decision when they turned on the enhancements for the first time, power flowing to the equipment embedded along his spine and immediately sending him into a seizure, his body twisting and writhing on the hospital bed. As his limbs spasmed and his eyes rolled back in his head, she smoothed her hand across his brow and she started to wonder if they were doing the right thing anymore.

Clinically, she knew this was how the world worked. He’d been a millimeter from death, and they’d pulled him back - it would take lots of work, time, and rehabilitation to make him whole again. But they’d wanted to make him more than whole - to make him an experiment, a tool to use against the Shimada empire, the prodigal son returned. But again, it wasn’t her place to decide the worth of a life, or if it was worth living, after everything was said and done. Ethicists wiser than her had struggled with these questions for centuries. She wasn’t a philosopher or a theologian - she was just a surgeon, and she was doing her job, and what was was asked of her, and what was ordered.

His visits to the medical bay for check-ups were short and terse, where he would answer only the questions asked of him, his sharp eyes darting around like a captured hawk. He learned quickly how to make basic repairs to his new body, eliminating any excess dependence on the technicians. Her light attempts at opening up a conversation - asking him what he was doing that weekend, or if he’d seen any good movies lately - resulted in a stoney silence, as he simply declined to answer, and she slowly just gave up on asking.

When she saw him at the watchpoint, back from his covert missions with Blackwatch, he stalked by her, fluid and graceful, a sense of anger sparking from him like a contained explosion. When she watched him fight in the videos they got from the field, he was aggressive and over-extending, pursuing operatives to eliminate them despite Reyes’s orders. And she’d bump into him around the watchpoint late at night, the soft red glow of his cybernetic enhancements lighting his way as he padded through the watchpoint’s hallways, filling the time that he could longer use for sleep.

It was only when she woke in the dark, mouth dry and sheets tangled around her, the red slash of his visor still watching her from her dreams, that she knew. When she watched his sword slash across an enemy, and he didn’t stop, but struck again and again and again. When she felt that she hadn't saved a man's life as much as she had created a physical embodiment of rage. That was when she knew that she had made the wrong choice.

**Author's Note:**

> So, real headcanon talk: I like to imagine that the "Genji incident" is kind of where Angela grew her backbone. She was only 27 at the time, and had only been at Overwatch for 2 years. I'm not sure if she would have had the courage to stand up to them yet, especially if there was that much pressure to do this job...I do think, however, it would have forever tainted her view of Overwatch, her job, and given her a pretty big guilt complex about not having the guts to stand up and say anything about it. I'll be exploring this more in a long!fic I'm working on... Anyhoo...


End file.
